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Dual Diagnosis

The term Dual Diagnosis is a term that is often used interchangeably by psychiatrists with the terms co-occurring disorder or co-occurring illnesses that involve a psychiatric diagnosis and a substance abuse diagnosis which may include both drugs and alcohol. A dual diagnosis occurs when an individual is affected by both chemical dependency and an emotional or psychiatric illness. Both illnesses may affect an individual physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually. Each illness has symptoms that interfere with a person’s ability to function effectively and relate to themselves and others. Not only is the individual affected by two separate illnesses, both illnesses interact with one another. The illnesses may exacerbate each other and each disorder predisposes to relapse in the other disease. At times the symptoms can overlap and even mask each other making diagnosis and treatment more difficult.

A person may sincerely try to recover from one illness and not acknowledge the other. As a person neglects his or her mental illness, that illness may recur. This recurrence may, in turn, lead a person to feel the need to "self-medicate" through drug use. Over time, the lack of progress toward recovery on both fronts may trigger feelings of failure and alienation. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the damage that occurs to the individual’s self-esteem.

The problem with dual diagnosis is that although a person may have a chemical dependency to drugs and or alcohol it is impossible to correctly diagnose and treat a “mental illness” without definitive proof. There are no blood tests, neurology tests, MRI’s or any other tests available to determine what and if a person has a “mental illness” and psychiatrists way of treating these “illnesses” is with drugs so it contradicts itself completely. A person can quit using street drugs and alcohol but is then going to be medicated by psychiatrists with their “legal” drugs? It completely defies all reasoning and contradicts itself.

The pharmaceutical companies have teamed up with psychiatrists to “make up” disorders and illnesses in order to cash in and make billions of dollars by distributing “legal” drugs to our so called “sick mentally ill” citizens of this country. It is a huge conspiracy fueled by the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry using mass marketing schemes to generate billions of dollars in revenue and it continues to grow. Every year the psychiatric industry publishes a manual called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that lists disorders and illnesses and every year there are new ones added to the list in order to continue distributing drugs and raking in huge profits.

Some disorders are legitimate but the majority of them are made up and there is no definitive way of knowing how to effectively treat them, especially if someone is pumped full of drugs, legal or illegal. Dual diagnosis is a made up term by psychiatrists to fool the public into purchasing “legal drugs” supplied by pharmaceutical companies that continue to cash in. If you or someone you love is suffering from chemical dependency please do the research and contact a rehabilitation center that practices drug free therapy? Don’t continue to be a victim of this terrible conspiracy.

Dual Diagnosis

Dual diagnosis is a term that refers to patients who have both a mental health disorder and substance use disorder. It may be used interchangeably with "co-occurring disorders" or "co morbidity." According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an estimated 10 million people in the United States will have a combination of at least one mental health and one substance abuse disorder in any twelve-month period.